PC failing at multitasking.

**Menelik_I** · May 07, 2011, 08:59 AM

I have a Dell Studio with a Intel Core i5 and running W7.

However when I play M2TW, Resident Evil 5 and playing music in the background ... my Uber-powerful computer miserably fail at multitasking

The Game slows down, the sound of both the music and game breakdown due to slow processing and the whole computer become destabilized.

The computer was expensive ... I don't understand how it is failing

ETA:

Sorry the OP was kind of confusing, when I play music and play game, either Resident Evil 5 or MT2W, not both at the time.

**Freddie** · May 07, 2011, 09:29 AM

Are you playing music via Youtube? If you are then what's probably happening is your video card is stuck in a power state used for streaming online content and isn't opening the taps when your game starts.

**Lord of Lost Socks** · May 07, 2011, 09:31 AM

Are you playing 2 games at the same time and playing music or are playing one of them and playing music?

**Menelik_I** · May 07, 2011, 12:19 PM

Originally Posted by Lord of Lost Socks

Are you playing 2 games at the same time and playing music or are playing one of them and playing music?

Originally Posted by Knight of Heaven

And if you are using youtube and games at the same time, it might be the GPU and RAM of the video card. not enough.

Sorry the OP was kind of confusing, when I play music and play game, either Resident Evil 5 or MT2W, not both at the time.

The situation generally happen when Playing game (RE5 or M2TW) + Music background on Winamp and I never shutdown my Utorrent background torrent app ... maybe it is the problem

**Knight of Heaven** · May 07, 2011, 01:35 PM

Originally Posted by Menelik_I

Sorry the OP was kind of confusing, when I play music and play game, either Resident Evil 5 or MT2W, not both at the time.

The situation generally happen when Playing game (RE5 or M2TW) + Music background on Winamp and I never shutdown my Utorrent background torrent app ... maybe it is the problem

ah ok ok it depends how you have the Utorrent configured. i use bitorrent, same thing, and if you are pushing alot of things, at high speeds, yes it will slow like hell any program you are running, like a game online or not.
Specialy if like me, manualy configure the number of connections alowed, to a high number, and force the encription protocol. I get insane download speeds, but if im downloading and sharing alot of files... any game i play online or not, will be laggy... sadly.

Anyway iit doesnt seem to be a hardware problem, that PC should cope with it just fine. If you have things normaly setup. Maybe its on software... have you tried format PC? and instal win again. Ill recomend win 7. Btw how manny RAM you have instaled? 4gb or higheir should cope what you are saying. Less then that, then you have a problem.

Utorrent will slow down your connection only. I have to shut it down will I play the xbox because otherwise the game will lag.

oh yeah normaly yes, but like i said above, it depends on the trafic, becouse the CPU is using RAm as well to copy files to HD. If the speed is high, and its alot of things at the same time, it slow PC quite a bit.

**Knight of Heaven** · May 07, 2011, 09:49 AM

And your Pc isnt that great , your CPU is decent, but it isnt that great. not anymore.

Men comom, even super computers have limits, running two games at once, is ill advised... by what you say im suprised that your power source or the graphic card doesnt burn.. and i mean literaly. 2 games at once?? you should also wacth your fans could be a refrigeration thing. now with the heat and all.
Anyway, runing a music media players that it isnt the windows media player, and a game it is ok and good i do it all the time, with my laptop. but dont push it specialy if you are transfering files and such from other Hard drives.
And if you are using youtube and games at the same time, it might be the GPU and RAM of the video card. not enough.

**MathiasOfAthens** · May 07, 2011, 10:49 AM

Happens to me too but usually when I am listening to music (can be on spotify or youtube) and surfing the web and opening pages... sometimes google maps or loading new pages that prob have a lot of information to load.

**MathiasOfAthens** · May 07, 2011, 12:41 PM

Utorrent will slow down your connection only. I have to shut it down will I play the xbox because otherwise the game will lag.

Winamp would already have the music loaded so your internet isnt requesting additional information like in a loading bar or anything that you find on youtube.

Obviously it sounds more graphical really or memory based.

**Crazyeyesreaper** · May 07, 2011, 04:54 PM

utorrent can slow things down as well as web browsers or music mostly becuase the HDD if your running only 1 harddrive is loading info for the game and music not only that but it is constantly writing data to the hdd from your torrents, not to mention the Harddrive do to windows being awesome has a page file that acts like ram

heres the thing an HDD can only access so many items write and read so many bits of data before it bogs down, your hardrive is probably bogging down,

if its an old hdd its probably slower by 20-25% compared to modern hdds, aka samsung F4 7200rpm F3 7200rpm, Western Digital Caviar black 1tb, etc
turn off the torrent app and the music try the game again see how performance is

I also have no idea what amount of or speed of ram you have, but first thing i can say is as a power user eewwwww!!! Dell! no wonder why lol sorry had to do it

**Menelik_I** · May 07, 2011, 05:06 PM

Originally Posted by Crazyeyesreaper

I also have no idea what amount of or speed of ram you have, but first thing i can say is as a power user eewwwww!!! Dell! no wonder why lol sorry had to do it

4GB of RAM ... Apple Fanboys will hate

**Crazyeyesreaper** · May 07, 2011, 05:13 PM

i hate apple more then dell..... mostly because Apple is even more closed off to the world then dell but thats off topic, anyway.... if 4gb of ram thats not the problem so my guess goes back the HDD being a bottleneck. that or ram is unstable and or cpu, which a quick Intel Burn test run at maximum ram settings will find out within a few minutes.

**MathiasOfAthens** · May 07, 2011, 05:54 PM

Dell the best though hands down.

I desperately want to own an XPS.

**Menelik_I** · May 07, 2011, 07:18 PM

Originally Posted by MathiasOfAthens

Dell the best though hands down.

I desperately want to own an XPS.

Originally Posted by Crazyeyesreaper

okay the above post i HOPE is sarcastic otherwise it makes me wish for a negative rep button lol Dell is by far the worst PC manufacturer in the world. for numerous reason. Alienware is passable a bit overpriced but at least there parts are industry standard.

I feel scammed

**Menelik_I** · May 08, 2011, 10:22 AM

Problem solved, it was the Utorrent ... looks like I had put ''infinite'' for the # of connections

Also my Laptop over-heating problem also dissapeared, looks that all that Seeding-downloading was heating the HD and CPU

**Crazyeyesreaper** · May 07, 2011, 05:58 PM

okay the above post i HOPE is sarcastic otherwise it makes me wish for a negative rep button lol Dell is by far the worst PC manufacturer in the world. for numerous reason. Alienware is passable a bit overpriced but at least there parts are industry standard.